Same same, but different 07/15/2011

Thailand is a lark.

Into Thailand

Most Asian borders are decorated with barbed wire and machine guns.  This one had an umbrella shading three guards sipping Pepsi.  They smiled and waved when I breezed past, then smiled and waved when I biked back confused.

“Um . . . is this the border?”

“Yes.  Thai border.  Very hot.”

“Do you need to see my passport?”

“Okay.”  They saw it.

“Check my bags?”

One of the men raised his sunglasses and squinted at my panniers.  “Bags good.”

His companions motioned to a building further down the road.  They decided I should fill my water bottles there.

38°C in Bangkok

“Get drink.  Sign entry card.  Very hot.”

They settled into their chairs, heads leaning back, and I pedalled away.

The relaxed mood didn’t surprise me.  Cambodia was as languid as the river winding through it, and Laos was so laid back it barely had a pulse.

I just didn’t expect mellow to survive in a country as kinetic, as dizzying as this.

Even Bangkok has an odd serenity about it.

The streets are swimming with packed buses, neon tuk-tuks and death-wish cabbies.  They whisk mobs in every direction, to temples and palaces, stadiums and museums, to throbbing discos and street-food villages that spring to life each night.

Khao San Road in Bangkok

The faces are rapid-fire, never-ending: businessmen, beggars and buskers, lady boys, ex-pats and sex-pats.

Students in pleated whites skip past wrinkled ladies selling bracelets. Leering men hand out fliers for shows where women do terrible things to ping-pong balls.

And in the middle of it all, quiet in his thoughts, I see an orange-robed monk reading a newspaper.

He fits.  The city belongs around him.

Bangkok is bedlam, but it isn’t urgent.  People don’t bark or run through the streets.  No one hangs out their car window to curse the driver ahead of them.  Even the creeps are soft-spoken.

So far Thailand has everything but stress.  I love it.